Firms Counting On Census In Targeting Diverse Markets

The 1990 census will collect an army of statistics about the changing U.S. population, a powerful tool for business in the age of niche marketing.

Food companies cooking up new edibles, banks looking for new branch locations and entrepreneurs choosing their next ventures will depend on the census`s demographic data in their decision-making.

Computer technology developments used by the U.S. Census Bureau in developing a huge street map of the country will revolutionize efforts to analyze market characteristics on a block-by-block basis, making the national headcount more valuable than ever to business.

Consumers` increasing diversity makes it more important for companies to target specific customers and differentiate between local markets-even shoppers at individual stores only few miles apart.

Marketers will be able to identify and locate fast-growing micromarkets-Hispanics, Asians, the elderly, aging Baby Boomers-and develop products tailored to their needs. They will be able to pinpoint where these groups live and stock appropriate products in neighborhood retail outlets.

In addition, the government will take advantage of compact disc technology in reporting census data, giving many small businesses direct access to the results for the first time.

``In business today, knowing where (to sell) is as important as knowing what (to sell),`` said Andrew M. Paul, chief operating officer of National Planning Data Corp., one of the nation`s largest private data firms. Private data firms are in the business of taking raw demographic statistics from the government and other sources, digesting it and then reselling it in easy-to-understand reports.

This year the Census Bureau has devised a map detailing every street, road, bridge and tunnel in the country, expressed in digital form and stored by computer. The map is called Topologically Integrated Geographics Encoding and Referencing-better known to census takers as the TIGER file.

``The government has a vested interest in defining geography well in order to get very exact headcounts`` block-by-block for congressional reapportionment and local funding, Paul said.

TIGER will make it possible to extract geographic-specific information months earlier and with a higher degree of accuracy.

``This will give the discriminating business person the data to say,

`There are more customers for me in this neighborhood than another neighborhood. I can precisely figure where to open my next store, where to send promotional mail, which billboards are seen by which groups of people,`

`` Paul said.

From the mind-boggling avalanche of information in the forthcoming census reports and TIGER file, data firms will be able to pull out only the numbers a client needs to determine, for instance, if the population of a particular ZIP code is growing or declining, or even what street traffic patterns are like in a single urban neighborhood.

``That information will help businesses save money and know how to spend their budgets more wisely,`` Paul said.

The 1990 census, officially begun April 1, is expected to count 250 million Americans, up 10 percent from 1980, and 106 million households. That means a population growth rate of less than 1 percent a year, the slowest since the Great Depression.

``People aren`t eating more food. So the important thing is to find segments of the population that are growing faster than average and target products at them,`` said Harry Estill, manager of corporate planning at Pet Inc. in St. Louis, a unit of Chicago-based Whitman Corp.

For example, Pet has no products aimed specifically at teenagers, a group declining in number. Instead, it is test-marketing a line of low-fat, low-sodium, shelf-stable packaged entrees that are microwavable. The Progresso To:Go line is aimed at the fast-growing group of aging Baby Boomers who are health-conscious, employed and on-the-go, Estill said.

Initial results of the population headcount must be delivered to President Bush by Dec. 31. But further data on the nation`s changing social and economic complexion, of most interest to marketing experts, won`t be available until April 1992. Data will continue streaming out of the Census Bureau through 1993.

``We already have a pretty good idea about which neighborhoods are growing or shrinking,`` said Paul Hall, senior manager of consumer

environmental research at General Foods USA. ``But the census is a good opportunity to go back and make sure the information is accurate.``

The census is expected to confirm the following trends, to name a few:

the nation`s black, Hispanic and Asian populations are growing faster than the population as a whole; women continue to be employed in growing numbers; urban areas are growing again; and the number of single-person households is on the rise.